In June 2006, I interviewed the Rev. Ed. Young, the leader of a Grapevine, Texas, megachurch that a survey of 2,000 church leaders had ranked No. 5 among the nation’s “50 Most Influential Churches in America.” I began my article this way, “Engaging and radical, one-time college basketball player Ed Young Jr. is on a fast break across America to get pastors and church staff to develop ministry game plans that will send folks out the door after church believing that God is their hero.”

 Little did I know, at the time, that Young would be sending couples out the church door and headed home to their bedrooms for lovemaking straight out the “Song of Solomon.”

 I paid special attention when the story hit the media the past week that Young preached from king-size bed, and declared married couples should start having more sex – as often as every day, to fortify their marriage bond. In an article on Sunday in the New York Times (headline: “Pastor’s advice for better marriage: More sex”), writer Gretel C. Kovach began her piece, “And on the seventh day, there was no rest for the married couple.” In fact the article said that Young told his Fellowship Church congregation a full week after first giving advice that they should just keep things going. Don’t let up. Keep going with the “congregation copulation,” but, of course, only for the married folks.

 Wrote Kovach, “Sometimes he reclined on the paisley coverlet while flipping through a Bible, emphasizing his point that it is time for the church to put God back in the bed.”

Now that’s not your daddy’s church sermon. “Today, we’re beginning this sexperiment, seven days of sex,” he told his audience. Kovach termed his delivery a “characteristic mix of humor, showmanship and Scripture.” Young calls his message “how to move from whining about the economy to whoopee.”

 So last Sunday, parishioners at Grapevine listened to a prerecorded sermon from Young and his wife, Lisa, “on jumbo screens over a candlelit stage.” The Times reported one of the church’s musicians strummed his guitar and noted, “I know there’s been a lot of love going around this week, among the married couples.”

 Lisa Young shared that her week of sex meant “some of us are smiling.” But folks were told that infidelities, addictions, pornography and other related issues meant “there’s been some pain; hopefully there’s been some forgiveness, to.”

 Ed Young poured on the instructions, telling couples to “keep on doing what you’ve been doing this week. We should try to double up the amount of intimacy we have in marriage. And when I say intimacy, I don’t mean holding hands in the park or a back rub.”

 Young said not only do couples grow closer together, but good sex brings them closer to God, helps them perform better at work, leave a loving legacy to children and may even prevent extramarital affairs.

 The pastor argues there is no shame in marital sex because “God thought it up. It was his idea.”

One academician weighed in on Young’s project. He called it “theologically bizarre, socially backward and vaguely pandering.” Louis Ruprecht, the Williams M. Suttles chair of religious studies at George State University, said the approach has flaws. “Imagine being ordered to have sex with your cheating spouse as the alleged road to marital recovery,” he said

 He went further: “If this sounds eerily close to a Viagra or Cialis advertisement, and I, for one, think that it does, then this points to the many ways in which evangelical Christianity is not driving policy or cultural criticism, but rather is being driven by these larger cultural trends, but rather is being driven by these larger cultural trends.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is taking a lot of heat for its members’ strong financial and advocacy role in getting Proposition 8 approved in California to change the state’s Constitution to specifically define marriage as only that between a man and woman.

Picketing and candlelight vigils around temples and church buildings have been taking place. While evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics gave mightily, mormonsfor8.com reports that $15.3 million, or 48 percent, of all donations for the support of the amendment were “identified as Mormon/likely Mormon.” Non-Mormons accounted for $9.3 million. The Knights of Columbus were the biggest contributors from among Catholics.

Anger has been fiercely expressed since the proposition passed, and Mormons and African-Americans have primarily been the target from gay and human rights organization because of their support. On Friday, the First Presidency of the Church issued a letter urging “respect and civility in public discourse” in the aftermath of the vote. The First Presidency represents the highest level of LDS authorities. President/Prophet Thomas Monson called for an end to reprisals that have followed the Nov. 8 vote where the amendment got 52.2 percent approval.

As has been typical of progressive voting patterns in America, most of the coastal counties of California, except in the southern part, voted against the amendment, while more rural and less populated counties inland, except two near Lake Tahoe, supported it. The overall tally was 6,156,848 yes to 5,646,170 no.

The First Presidency’s letter said “places of worship have been targeted by opponents of Proposition 8 with demonstrations and, in some cases, vandalism. People of faith have been intimidated for simply exercising their democratic rights.” It was summed up with the statement: “The end of free and fair election should not be the beginning of a hostile response in America.”

 In many ways, Mormons and other religiously conservative faiths will be stigmatized by their position on this issue for as long as it takes to repeal the amendments in California, Arizona and elsewhere. They have every right to try to hold to some argument that homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle” or inherently sinful unlike race or gender. But it is an unenlightened viewpoint that conjures stances clung to  by reactionary groups in history that held fast until dams for justice broke.

Just as racial bigotry and the marginalization of women largely diminished in America through the aging and the ultimate death of older, more intolerant generations, so it will be in the issue of  homosexuality and sexual identity.

That is just how social movements work. Surveys consistently show that younger Americans aren’t hung up about same-gender relationships and equality. They understand, and their humanitarian instincts support it. Constitutions are woefully clumsy places to put issues like marriage. Why not clutter them with positions on the definition of “clean water” or a ban on noise on Sunday mornings or protecting whales or banning plastic bags?

 Same-sex relationships and activities permeate nature. I like some of these quotes that are out there on the Internet:

 ”From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.”

 ”It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It’s like disapproving of rain.”

 ”Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.”"

 Or this from Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “We struggled against apartheid because we were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about. It is the same with homosexuality. The orientation is a given, not a matter of choice. It would be crazy for someone to choose to be gay, given the homophobia that is present.”

The Internet has been abuzz over what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could possibly plan for the huge 1,900-acre tract of undeveloped land it has bought in Maricopa. The land was sold to the Mormons by two major home builders, Fulton Homes Corp., and Shea Homes for Active Adults.

The land was fetched in October for $72 million, according to an Arizona Republic article by J. Craig Anderson – or what amounts to $37,000 per acre. Maybe it’s a mere investment. Maybe the church has some grand plan for the land found partway between Phoenix and Tucson. Home developers had planned to keep erecting more new houses on the desert and expanding boomtown Maricopa. But the housing bubble burst, and home construction in Maricopa, incorporated only in 2003, went into a tailspin.

 Anderson talked to real estate professionals who said the land wasn’t worth “anything close to what the church paid” and Maricopa wouldn’t seem to be a place where the market would come back as quickly to recoup the investment. The land officially was bought by Property Reserve Inc., a real-estate holding company owned by the church. The church wasn’t talking about the land deal, which is said to be the largest real estate deal by far this year in Pinal County.

 ”Scrapped projects include a 6,000-home community dubbed Avalea, which would have included one of Shea’s active-adult communities, as well as conventional housing by Fulton and Shea,” the article said. “Now the orphaned land of Avalea belongs to the church, and some local analysts say Shea and Fulton got off lucky.” Maricopa’s median home price has declined more than 40 percent since a peak in 2005, and “most home builders have abandoned plans for future development in the area.”

 Fulton Homes’ founder is Ira Fulton, a prominent Mormon, who has given $250 millions to church-owned Brigham Young University, the University of Utah and Arizona State University, where two colleges carry the Fulton name: The Ira Fulton College of Engineering and the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, named for his wife.

 Offhand, the land is too far south to be the site for two new Mormon temples announced last spring for the area – Gilbert and Phoenix. But the church has not come forward with any other information or details about temple plans. If they wanted to make a move to reach out to southern Arizona, especially Tucson, going 35 miles south to Maricopa would be a “step in the right direction.” A third new temple is planned for the Gila Valley near Safford and Thatcher, and it is likely to be the first one completed. The goal for finishing it is the end of next year, said Don Evans, Arizona church spokesman. When the three new ones are built, it will bring to five the number of Mormon temples in the state.

 Anderson’s article has been posted or linked on many blogs and Web sites – including the LDS watchdog groups. The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City carried on its TribTalk blog a wag’s comment that the Salt Lake Temple would be relocated to Arizona, that an amusement park would be built there, as a result of a vision by church president and prophet Thomas Monson. Some compare the tract to the another property – also 1,900 acres near Eldorado, Texas, the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where polygamy is open and fundamentalist strongman Warren Jeffs once was king. The Mormon Church, of course, continuously seeks to distances itself completely from the FLDS.

 Some believe the land in Maricopa was bought as an investment for the church to hold until the market turns around and it can be resold to developers for a profit.

Evans said Thursday he didn’t know why the land was bought. “I have no idea, I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “And I really can’t comment on it. I doubt you would extract anything out of the church people either. The church, over the years, has bought and sold land in different metropolitan areas.”

There must be something inherently vulnerable about television ministries — something certain to burst like an airborne soap bubble. The “Possibility Thinkers” of the famed Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., are the latest to face a crisis in the pulpit.

The media are saying Robert H. Schuller, the elder, has taken Robert A. Schuller, the younger, to the woodshed and essentially has removed his handsome made-for-TV son from being senior pastor of the syndicated weekly TV broadcast, “The Hour of Power,” which can be seen 7 a.m. Sundays in the Valley on KNXV-TV (Channel 15). Officially, they’ve been saying Robert H., 82, the founder of the worldwide, and Robert A., 54, “have different ideas as to the direction and the vision for this ministry.”

“For this lack of shared vision and the jeopardy in which this is placing this entire ministry, it has become necessary for Robert and me to part ways,” the father said. He said his son would remain senior pastor of the cathedral, but it was not made clear how much regular preaching he would do. But more outside pastors were being brought in to preach in some kind of a rotation. What this will do to the all-important dollar giving from the world’s viewers remains to be seen.

We have visited the Crystal Cathedral for Sunday services about three times over the years, and exactly a year ago, I interviewed Robert A., the son, when he was in Valley, promoting his book, “Walking in Your Own Shoes: Discover God’s Direction for Your Life.” He’s done 13 books. His father has written dozens.

That day, Robert A. told that not long after he was named senior pastor in January 2006, he was constantly told he had big shoes to fill. His father had developed the ministry across a half-century and had built the majestic cathedral of steel and glass panes – long after his beginnings as a preacher in a drive-in theater.

 ”It didn’t take very long to realize that I could never fill his shoes,” Schuller told me. “Over time, I have no doubt that the Crystal Cathedral will become a different place. I won’t try to make it different, and I didn’t become the pastor of the church to institute change.” He told me, however, he had decided to make the sacrament of communion a weekly rite.

 If appears from church and media reports that the younger Schuller has become more inclined to turn the “Hour of Power” to a traditional church and may not be as inclined to emphasize the mantra of his father, which was drawn heavily from the late Norman Vincent Peale, the upbeat New York preacher whose 1952 book, “The Power of Positive Thinking” sold millions. Robert H. Schuller tweaked that to “Possibility Thinking” and wrote a slew of books that didn’t dwell on sin, guilt or an angry God.

The Classis, an association of Reformed Church in American congregations in California, of which the Crystal Cathedral is the flagship, released a statement that it wanted to help the mega-church in Garden Grove through its changes so that “a new generation of servant-leaders” could help the Crystal Cathedral. “Persistent and very real differences in vision for the ministries between these two leaders has led to an apparent need for Classis’ help in furthering ministry objectives,” it said. Both the Schullers were assured they would get help “to be passionate about their individual visions and remain harmonious in their relationships, not just as father and son, but also as co-laborers in the Gospel of Christ.”

 One blogger, R. Albert Mohler Jr., in a piece titled “So much for possibility thinking,” said the father believed that preaching “what is sin and isn’t sin” was out of bounds for the TV ministry. He regarded the Crystal Cathedral as a mission first and then a church. Some 25 years ago, the father’s book, “Self-Esteem: The New Reformation,” which was sent free to thousands of pastors, argued the evangelical church had lost sight of the real message of the gospel – one of self-esteem. He said a therapeutic gospel was needed, not expository biblical preaching. He wrote, “We cannot speak out with a ‘Thus saith the Lord” strategy when we are talking to people who couldn’t care less about the Lord.”

 Mohler said his examination of Robert the Younger’s sermons shows Bible citations and “the direct implication and instruction that we are to learn from it.” But Mohler said the Younger’s sermons don’t reveal anything “even resembling what most evangelicals would consider expository biblical preaching.” Mohler concludes for himself that “possibility thinking obviously has its limits” and that the “real Gospel” is what’s needed.

 When it comes to religion, the possibilities for finding the truth are endless, given how many people say they know where it is found.

 Baptist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Disciples of Christ, Quaker, Episcopalian, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, United Methodist and United Church of Christ.

What is significant about that list of religions? There are 12 listings, but eight faiths represented.  They are the sequence of religious preferences of all the  U.S. presidents in my lifetime, going back to Harry Truman and ending with President-Elect Barack Obama.  They include three Baptists (Truman, Carter and Clinton) and two Presbyterians (Eisenhower and Reagan).  They overwhelmingly represent mainline denominations, the grouping  that has been in a steady membership decline.

Religious organizations are weighing in on Tuesday’s decisive victory by Sen. Barack Obama for president of the United States, and most do so from recognizable preferences and biases.

One of them is Faith in Public Life, which says it “works to transform the values debate in America by increasing the strength and visibility of faith leaders dedicated to justice, compassion and the common good.”   The analysis says evangelicals are not  the monolithic bloc they were just four years ago.  It calls Catholics swing voters.  Still “religious voices on the political scene are no longer just a few,” the group said.  James Dobson, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, John Hagee, Jim Wallis and others surely spoke out in the past campaign. 

“This is a religious rebalancing election,” said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research, who led the vote analysis.  “We see Roman Catholics being the very true swing voters – going for Gore, then Bush and now solidly for Barack Obama, some diversification in the white evangelical vote, and Obama making inroads among all religious attendance groups, with the largest increase among the more-than-weekly attenders.” It found that Obama made his greatest gains among voters who going more than once per week, narrowing a 29-point Republican advantage in 2004 to a 12-point advantage in 2008.

It found Obama have a 4-point advantage over Democrat John Kerry in 2004 for those who identified themselves as monthly church attenders.  Obama defeated McCain soundly among Catholics (55 percent to 44 percent), doing better than Kerry in 2004 and Gore in 2000.  In Indiana, Republicans had a 13-point advantage among Catholics in 2004 (even with Kerry being a Catholic) and Democrats and Republicans split 50-50 this time around.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine offered data showing that in this election, compared to 2004,  the white evangelical vote increased 3 percent; the Protestant vote went up 5 percent; the Catholic vote up by 8 percent; the Latino vote up 13 percent; the black vote up 7 percent; and the more-than-weekly church attendance up 8 percent. In key states, there was an shift of evangelicals for Obama of 14 percent in Colorado, 8 percent in Indiana, 4 percent in Michigan, 8 percent in North Carolina and 4 percent in Ohio.

Wallis attributee the shift to a candidate, Obama, who “better spoke to their aspirations and values.”                                        .

  When I was 8 years old, we moved into a farmhouse in Grundy County, Iowa, where the renters of our farm had left behind dozens of assorted textbooks, mostly used over the years in the one-room schoolhouse up the road. It was 1954, and our rural school would only survive until the spring of 1955 when lawmakers brought about rapid shutdown of the schools and sent kids to town school.

 The history books abandoned would immediately become my window to the American story and its rich chronicle. What most caught the interest of an 8-year-old boy was learning about the pageantry of American presidents. My brother’s first name was Lincoln, and my father talked much about the 16th president who “saved the Union.”

 I quickly immersed myself in the biographies of the presidents. Soon I could recite, from memory all the 34 presidents from Washington to Eisenhower, as well as their years in office. Later, I even memorized the vice presidents in order. My childhood “trick” for grown-ups was to rattle off the last names of the presidents in rapid order. And if they wanted the full version, I’d go, “George Washington, 1789 to 1797; John Adams, 1797 to 1801; Thomas Jefferson……..Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 to now?” As the years passed, I would keep that litany of names current, although I now have to stop to think of the latter names.

 That exercise, like learning all the U.S. states and their capitals, serve the important task of grounding us in civics and historical/geographical perspective. There was a time I knew the whereabouts of the worlds’ countries, but African nations’ independence and the breakup of the Soviet Union doomed that.

 Now we are about to add Barack Obama to that gallery of American presidents. I add him to my lightning litany of presidents. On Jan. 20, I intend to spend the day in front of the TV, taking in all the pageantry and commentary of the historic moment. By then, I’ll be out of a job, with time on my hands to blow a day on whatever I wished.

Like many Americans, I had scarcely heard of Obama until he got onto the speakers’ platform at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. He turned my head, made me stay and watch him speak. He was an Illinois state legislator for the open U.S. Senate seat. His crisp speaking style, his youth, poise and passion left an impression.

Here was a would-be senator from the state that has produced such memorable U.S. senators as Adlai Stevenson, Everett Dirksen, Paul Simon, Charles Percy and Stephen Douglas. Obama’s election that fall came rather easily because the Republicans lamely brought in Alan Keyes three months before the election to be his opponent. Keyes, from Maryland, was a veritable carpetbagger. Obama won 70 percent of the vote.

 I remembered that moment four years ago Tuesday night as Obama gave his victory speech in Chicago. Thousands of speeches later, he demonstrated anew a coveted skill that keeps on giving him success.

 I imagine what he says at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20 will be every attempt to be a speech for the ages. The inaugural address will be, rich in carefully crafted phrases intended to be fresh ways to enunciate timeless ideas. What he evokes, I suspect, will stir the souls of billions on this planet. It’ll seek to summons anew his “audacity of hope,” something new in the human experience, a better way to direct human instincts to a common good.

 I personally am grateful America has not squandered this opportunity to take a chance on a 47-year-old candidate, sometimes called too untested for the planet’s most powerful job. If he can continue to inspire us, can attract fields of the best public servants to help guide him through the mazes and mine fields, if he can avoid the corrupting forces that lurk in government, then maybe this will be an epic presidency that will one day be put up beside the tenures of the Roosevelts, Lincoln and Madison.

 Pray for his tall lean man who has confounded us by his skills in assembling a near-prefect textbook presidential campaign. Let the cynics call him a “messiah,” but he seems, indeed, larger than life. “Change we need” was his mantra. Let the change begin.

 Meanwhile, I’ll get to practicing ” … Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama.”